Compensation for Ghosts
by DreamingCynic
Summary: Tomorrow, she'll be dead, and he'll be caught in the grip of a vice-like obsession with the ghost that haunts his memory and censors his behaviour. But as of today, she's too alive to be noticed, and he's just a git. One-shot, Au, Sasuhina if you squint.


He noticed her just that once. In the time that it took for him to take his gaze elsewhere, she was out of thought and out of mind, dismissed into oblivion.

Or at least, until the next day, when the beginning of an obsession took root. Then that image had been seared into his mind's eye permanently. That once quick glance over her human form was etched into Sasuke Uchiha's psyche, and where his memory failed, his imagination only served compromise, adding and subtracting until the woman permanently etched into his mind's eye was not the awkward girl-woman he had known in life, but something different, something darker.

"Materialism is the belief that everything in this world is made of matter, and can be explained by physical interactions of this matter. However—this doesn't eliminate the soul, or at least not for some religious believers." Sasuke gestured at the screen displaying his PowerPoint with futile effort, and languished against the desk, tucking a leg under the other. His eyes sought the window of the classroom, away from the eyes of his classmates.

He was an enigma to them, and he preferred it that way. Even those in his inner circle didn't quite know his mind, even though his mind was probably more mundane than the others realised. His fingers caught the edge of his stiff collar- it was too hot for this type of shit.

His eyes caught a fleeting glimpse of her silent form, her legs clamped together under the Kohona school green plaid skirt, and her hair, long and lank falling over her torso. Her lips were pressed down together in determination as she scrawled down an annotation on her sheet, her eyebrows furrowed.

Her eyes were visible for a moment- and that was bizarre, odd, strange, because the Hyuuga heiresses' eyes were always covered by her dark hair, like a Yūrei from a Japanese horror. Her eyes were white, like her cousin's but softer, rounder, more feminine and just as freakish. Had he known that image would have bored itself into his head until it was so fused with his retina sometimes he would see it when he blinked, perhaps he would have attempted to speak to her in that short time that they had left, the short time she had left on the mortal coil.

And in that moment, Sasuke brushed over her, yearning for the promises of freedom that the sunny light through the window promised. Hinata's pen kept scribbling, as if she were trying to scratch away the notes into her brain.

She was a loser, in every sense of the word. She was the kind of nerdy girl who kept her legs crossed and spent more money on stationary than clothes. But she didn't even fit the stereotype. She wasn't top of the class (he was). He'd once sneaked a look at a returned test paper, and was surprised to find that she was smiling over an average grade. There was nothing to redeem her. She wasn't pretty, clever, or socially ambitious, and although she had money, she certainly didn't look nor act as if she did.

Sasuke hated contradictions of character.

He returned to the screen, untroubled by the Hyuuga geek and pointed to the screen, outlining theories and summarising various arguments and their philosophers. Some of the arguments were stupid, and some of them were intelligent. Hinata's pen continued to scratch away, making no distinction between the two categories. Sasuke doubted she had the astute intelligence required to distinguish between the two.

He finished, bowing his head to the class, almost mockingly. "Any questions?"

He surveyed his class, confident in his explanation. It was small, only fourteen or so had taken the subject. A hand rose. It belonged to Sakura Haruno, whom Sasuke was incessantly dogged by, which had initially only annoyed him. Eventually though, her persistence cumulated in some ounce of respect for the girl's working ethos and persistence, and a wholly unexpected friendship.

Sasuke liked stubborn people. They reminded him of himself.

"Yes, Sakura?"

"Do you believe in souls, Sasuke-kun?" She asked, her eyes curious and her pink lips teasing.

He almost frowned, but instead teased a sly retort. "I don't. I think we simply trick ourselves. Weak people can never accept their own mortality."

Sakura pouts. "Religious people are not weak people. You need a lot of strength to believe in something that can't be proved, especially with all the negativity surrounding organised religion today."

"I didn't say that religious people were weak. I said it is weak to assume that you'll live forever. If we have souls, they're vastly overestimated, and just as mortal and corrupt as our bodies," the collective mass of eyes bore into him. He flicks his hair backwards. Somewhere in this collective mass Hinata observes and stares, and only later does he recall her eyes watching his every move, analysing and evaluating every detail, perceiving his behaviour with a ghastly clarity. The silence of her scratching fountain pen will speak volumes more than she'll ever say to him.

Sakura pouts, her top lip pushed up with indignation. There'll be a conversation in the future, held in a cheap coffee shop with the hapless Naruto playing referee, where Sasuke and Sakura will throw taught comments at each other, about each others viewpoints of the world in general. Sasuke is an atheist, and a judgemental one at that. Sakura is Roman Catholic, albeit liberal when it suits her (women's rights being one of them). They make for explosive company.

Naruto, the undecided agnostic, sits on the side-lines, and occasionally guffaws at their comments and insults.

But that'll be after the breakdown, the one that he won't be able to explain, and neither will his psychiatrist. And it won't be three sitting around that table. She'll be there too, the bastardised figurine morphed from the girl he once knew. And she'll watch him through demurely lowered lashes, the other two blissfully unaware of her presence, unaware of her attachment to their friend, unaware of her cold breath down the back of his neck, and of her fingers on his shoulder-blades, tapping him, playing him like a piano.

"Any more questions?"

Oddly enough, it is the Nara waster, who took the subject because he believed it would be an easy pass, who raises his hand lethargically with cat-like grace. Sasuke notes the red-ringed eyes, and the slow, steady rising of the boy's hand. Shikamaru is as high as a kite. "So do you believe in free will, since we have no soul, Uchiha?"

Sasuke, annoyed by his prolonged talk bites back a snarl. "Not really. We think we are free to make our own choices, but in truth, our fate is governed by our environment and our genes," He recalls that the Nara has recently impregnated a girl from Suna, and clicks his fingers. "Imagine a kid. His Father was a high school dropout, who spends his time smoking weed. The father's on the dole, he's unemployable. The Mother feels trapped—all that built up resentment towards the father, if he hadn't planted the kid in her, she could have done things, she could have been someone. She takes it out on the kid. Do you think that kid has a chance in hell? He'll fail like his parents."

The class nods dumbly, not quite understanding the pointed example. Only Shikamaru blinks, and even then, Sasuke doubts much of that has gone in.

Except her. Her little mouth falls in dumb shock, a neat little looped "o", understanding his barb perfectly. Is she outraged that a person can be so callous? Is she upset someone can judge so quickly—that someone can make a comment like that? Her white, dead fish eyes harden, and glaze.

"Very nice, Uchiha. Sit down," intones the voice of the philosophy teacher, Kakashi. Sasuke nearly jumps, having forgotten the teacher's presence. Kakashi likes to leave the class to itself by writing a question on the board and listening to the discussion (pretending to read a book, but occasionally making a comment to stop the class conversation going off into random topics), or randomly writing a name on the board with a topic and leaving it to them to do the research for next lesson's discussion. He isn't much of a teacher in truth.

Kakashi faces the class, and sweeps his eyes around. "Hyuuga," he settles. "Idealism. Tuesday morning. A nicer PowerPoint with more pictures than Uchiha's will do nicely. Class dismissed."

She jumps in surprise, pulling herself out of her reverie, and mutters to herself, gathering her books and making quick notes in a flurry with that scratchy, leaky pen. Sasuke notes with glee that she's already flustered by the thought of having to stand to the front of class and talk. Her hands are shaking with worry, and she's biting that chapped lip of hers, and it's starting to bleed. She won't surpass his presentation. His position is secure, even if she is a Hyuuga, and needs to be watched.

She shouldn't worry, and he shouldn't gloat. He'll be doing her presentation on Tuesday, a last minute rushed affair done by special request by Kakashi-sensei, because by then, she'll be dead, knocked over by a car in her road.

And Sasuke will stare into the abyss revealed to him, and the dark abyss?

Well. She'll stare back.

* * *

><p><span>Author's note <span>

Hey- Just a drabble I wrote to get in the mood for the type of person Sasuke is so I would write him with greater accuracy in my current larger Sasuhina fic, Decimated. A special heads up to the lovely wingedmercury for betaing this tripe! Her patience knows no bounds!

I would like to know what you think ;)- If Sasuke is simply shocked into a psychotic episode by her sudden death, or if Hinata's ghost haunts him because he's so cruel, an he rebukes her right to a soul on the day before she dies. (Or if you interpret it in a different way to the way I intended it to be read- that would be cool!)

Thanks for reading ;)


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